Rauros
by Nesta
Summary: In which Faramir and his small daughter go on a pilgrimage.


**Rauros **

**I**

'Should you take her, my dear?' asked Éowyn. 'Such a small child to go on so sad an errand?'

'If it were any other child,' answered Faramir, 'of course I would not dream of taking her, but Fíriel is different. What I feel, she feels; near or far, it makes no difference. The moment she becomes bored, or tired, or cold, Bergil shall take her straight back to Morwen, I promise you.'

'Very well. As for Master Elboron, he may not have complained to you, but he is most put out.'

'He offered to come, but I told him no. However good his intentions, he would be bored in five minutes, and fidget me to death in ten.'

'Elboron adores you,' said Éowyn, smiling faintly. 'You could hardly expect him not to make the offer.'

'The other plan is far better. I'm sure you can persuade him of that, my love, even if I cannot.'

Éowyn's smile became delicately ironic. 'I'll try.'

**II**

'Why always Fíriel and not me?'

It was an unusual question from Elboron, and spoken in an unusually peevish tone from one normally so sunny-natured and free from jealousy.

'That's unfair and you know it,' chided his mother. 'When you have convinced us that you can sit quietly for more than five minutes without fidgeting, and when you decide that sitting quiet and still for a whole day is what you want to do, then maybe your father will let you go with him. Or maybe not; it's for him to say, not you or me. Is it even what you want? Truly, now?'

Elboron considered the question honestly, and reluctantly shook his head, but stuck to his original grievance. 'All the same, it is always Fíriel and not me. Father loves Fíriel better than any of us.'

'In a way, I suppose that is true,' said Éowyn, answering honesty with honesty. 'But you must not make that a reproach to either of them, or a subject for complaint. It is the way of things, and we can't change it. Your father does not love the rest of us any the less because he loves Fíriel more. Do you think he does _not _love you?'

Elboron shook his head again. 'No, mother, only not so much. Don't you mind it, mother?'

'No. As I told you, it is the way of things. Don't you understand that love is not like honey, to be dealt out in spoonfuls from the jar, so that if one person gets more, another must have less? And in any case, we have another task for you, a very important one.'

Elboron brightened. 'What important task? Is it something interesting?'

'I don't know about interesting; I hope it is, and it must be done well. Since I shall be riding to Edoras ahead of your father, I, as a mere woman, shall need an escort. Someone who can ensure that our arrival is managed with the proper courtesy and dignity. Someone who knows how to behave in a king's court. Someone who can prove that Rohan does not excel Ithilien in courtesy - '

'Rohan doesn't excel Ithilien in anything!' broke in Elboron indignantly.

'- by which I mean someone who does not interrupt his elders while they are speaking,' continued Éowyn with mild irony, 'and who does not respond to the sort of provocation Prince Elfwine might have in mind, nor offer any provocation of his own.' Elboron reddened. 'Can you manage all that with credit, do you think? Remembering that our reputation will hang on it?'

'I think I can, mother.' Elboron envisaged the scene, put himself in his courtliest posture at the centre of it, and was satisfied. It would, after all, be more amusing than just sitting still for a whole day.

'Then you had better go and re-check your luggage. There'll be no sending back for anything you have forgotten, this time! After that you can come and bid me good-night, and so to bed. Don't look so indignant! You need your sleep, and so do we all. We shall be away very early tomorrow morning.'

**III**

Faramir, meanwhile, was also negotiating terms, this time with the privileged Fíriel, whose skill at spinning out the bedtime ritual amounted to genius.

'First you say early bed when I'm not a bit sleepy, and then you tell a very short story. It's not fair, tell another one.'

'You know perfectly well that an early start tomorrow means early bed tonight. I said one story, and one story you have had.'

'Just one very, very little story?'

'No!'

'Then can I tell you one? I know one that's so short, you wouldn't believe it. It begins…'

'No! Go to sleep now, or you'll never be awake in time, and we shall have to leave you behind. I mean it. '

Fíriel assessed her father's threat against the severity of his expression, decided that he was not bluffing, and capitulated – or almost.

'All right, if you give me three kisses instead of two, and remind me not to forget the secret.'

'What secret?'

'A most important, secret secret that I most particularly mustn't forget, or tell anybody about, even you. It's here, under my pillow.'

'If the secret is as secret as all that,' said her father dryly, 'then you had better stop talking about it, because in a moment you will have told me all about it.

Fíriel's face fell as she realised the truth of this. 'All right, but before we leave tomorrow, you must say to me, '"Have you forgotten the secret?"'

'Very well.'

'Promise faithfully. Otherwise I shan't go to sleep for worrying about it. Not one wink.'

Faramir capitulated in his turn. His daughter took after him in that she invariably carried out her threats. 'I promise faithfully. And now, goodnight, Fíriel.'

'Good night. Kiss kiss kiss…'

'You said three kisses, child, not thirty. Let me go. Now!'

Fíriel unclasped her arms from around her father's neck, lay down, closed her eyes, and assumed her most angelic expression. 'I'm asleep now.'

**IV**

Faramir met Éowyn at the door of their chamber.

'Children!' they said together in one breath, and laughed.

'But you wouldn't be without them,' said Éowyn.

'Just now and then, for a very short time,' said Faramir, reaching for her, 'I really think I would.'

**V**

On this clear day, Rauros, despite its mighty voice, could be seen before it was heard, by the golden cloud of spray that hung between the pale spring sky and the tender green of the new spring grass. As the roaring of the falls became insistent, the two cavalcades prepared to separate; Elboron, almost choking on his own dignity, rode to the head of the larger party, while Fíriel, sitting bolt upright before her father on his tall grey horse, assumed an air of stately solemnity.

At a safe distance from the edge of the lawn at Pinnath Gelin Bergil lifted Firiel down from the horse, and she stood very still as her father dismounted and Bergil led the horse away. When the two of them were alone, Faramir took her hand, and she walked fearlessly at his side almost to the brink of the torrent, the spray wetting her face and casting a net of fine diamonds over her dark hair.

'Back a little way, now,' said her father, leading her to a patch of fine grass out of reach of the hovering water.

'What do we do now, Father?' she asked.

'We sit and think.'

'About what? About Uncle Boromir?'

'Yes.'

Faramir sat cross-legged and became part of the landscape, unmoving as a rock and completely absorbed, impervious to cold and discomfort although all his senses were alert and ready to react instantly to any perception of danger; he had learned the lesson of stillness a long time ago. Fíriel sat dutifully beside him and did her best to focus her thoughts for what, to her, seemed a very long time, but try as she might, they would stray: to the myriad greens of trees and bushes and grass; to the last grey-silver dance of the river before it plunged over the fall; to the darting flight of the first returning swallows; and to the dearness of the man beside her, not at that moment thinking of her, and yet somehow more wholly her own than he had ever been before. The world was a very beautiful place and must be very hard to leave, especially if the people you loved best had to stay behind and try to get along without you. Suddenly the bright colours blurred before Fíriel eyes and she clutched wildly at her father's arm to hold him back from the precipice, though she knew it was a safe distance away.

Faramir emerged from his reverie with some irritation. 'What is it, daughter? Didn't you promise to keep still?'

He had not spoken sharply, but the reproof brought the tears spilling from Fíriel's eyes and there was a distinct wobble in her voice as she answered, 'S-sorry, Father.'

'There there, it doesn't matter. Go and pick some flowers and make a garland with them, the way Morwen showed you. Only stay in sight, and don't go near the water's edge, like a sensible girl.'

'I won't, Father,' promised Fíriel, glad of the distraction, and ran off. Faramir relapsed into stillness and thought, but aware every moment of Fíriel's small figure as she sought her flowers, her unstudied movements as graceful as a dancer's; discerning, presently, the bright thread of her singing against the dark roar of the torrent. Despite his earlier demand for silence, he felt neither dance nor song as an intrusion; rather they blended into his memories until he felt that the one who was lost might at any moment appear and be restored to them in a world that was new.

Fíriel was before him again, not laden with flowers as he expected but carrying a single one delicately in her hand. 'Father? May I show you this?'

'What is it?'

'A flower I've never seen before, and that's strange, because I know all the flowers of Rohan, just as well as I know the flowers of home. And I know all their names, because Mother told me. It's only a little flower, but bright yellow like the sun, though it's shaped more like a star. What is it?'

He took it carefully from her and examined it closely. 'I've never seen it before either, nor any flower so delicate. I wonder … bright as the sun, but shaped like a star … the sun-star … _elanor_.'

'What is _elanor_?'

'The elven-flower of Lothlorien, where Queen Arwen lived at one time. I have never heard of it growing anywhere else, but perhaps someone who had been in Lórien might bring it away with him; I don't know. It's strange, very strange, to find it growing here.'

Fíriel spoke the thought he had not expressed. 'Uncle Boromir had been in Lórien.'

'So he had.'

'Perhaps it grows here for him.'

'Perhaps it does.'

'Then I shall make the garland for him, and put the _elanor_ in it, since it grew here specially for him.' Fíriel's face was bright, sorrow banished by her discovery. 'Now I'll pick more flowers and make the garland, as well as I can make it, and I'll do it very quietly so that you can go on thinking. Is that a good plan?'

'Yes, a very good one.'

Silence returned until Fíriel's self-imposed task was done. 'Now the garland is finished! It's a very good one, the best I've ever made. It will go with my secret. I can tell you about the secret now, if you ask me.' She smiled at her father in conspiratorial triumph.

'Tell me then' said Faramir obediently.

Fíriel unfastened the small satchel she carried and took out a piece of paper, carefully folded and bearing the Steward's seal. Faramir made a mental note to find out which of the clerks she had persuaded to perform, or overlook, this outrageous abuse of official procedure, and then cancelled the note; it was scarcely a matter that endangered the security of the realm.

'What is it, Fíriel?'

'It's a letter to Uncle Boromir. A long letter. It took me three days to write, in secret. Then I copied it and copied it until there wasn't a single mistake. I told him about my new pony, and how Elboron fell out of the walnut tree that he'd most particularly been told not to climb and what Mother said about it, and about King Éomer's visit and how Elboron gave Elfwine a black eye and what you said about that, and then I told him absolutely everything about you, and at the end I told him not to worry because I was here to look after you and always will be, and then I drew a picture of my new pony, and then I put kisses. Wasn't that a good letter? Do you want to see it, to make sure there aren't any mistakes?'

'Since it is a sealed letter, and addressed to Uncle Boromir,' answered Faramir gravely, 'it would be most improper for me to open it. _Sealed_ letters, you know, should only be opened by the person they are addressed to.'

Firiel blushed, but sensing no anger in her father, pressed closer to him and whispered, 'I thought that if I could put the letter on the water just before the falls, the way his boat went, it might find its way to him. Do you think it might?'

'I don't know, sweetheart; we can only try.'

They returned to the water's edge, and Faramir held Fíriel's left hand securely as she bent forward and tenderly laid both letter and garland on the flood, which immediately carried them away.

'I hope he'll like the letter,' said Firiel, and then, choking with tears, 'Father, I _wish _Uncle Boromir was here with us now.'

'So do I, sweetheart … so do I,' answered Faramir, and suddenly, overwhelmed by the suppressed grief of all the lost years, found himself huddled on the ground with Firiel in his arms, his cheek against her smooth dark head, and sobbing helplessly like a child, aware of nothing but his grief until he head her small, high voice pleading, 'Don't cry … _please_, Father, don't cry, Uncle Boromir wouldn't like it.'

With an effort he let her go, and she scrambled to her feet, produced a small handkerchief, and offered it to him with an absurdly maternal gesture that brought irresistible laughter following on the very heels of grief.

'You're quite right, Fíriel,' he said, obediently wiping his eyes. 'Uncle Boromir certainly would not like it.'

'He'd say that soldiers of Gondor didn't cry.'

'So he would.'

'Better now?'

'Yes, I'm better now. Look how high the sun is. Aren't you hungry?'

'Aren't you?'

'No, I am fasting today.'

'Then so will I.'

'No, you will not, because for one thing I promised Mother you would not go hungry, and for another, if you are hungry it will make you cross.' She pouted, but nodded and accepted the pasty and fruit he gave her, and then went to sleep, huddled in a cloak, with her head in his lap and her two small hands clasped in one of his. He sat and gazed into the golden mist of the fall, until the fading of the light and the chill in the air warned him that the short spring day was ending. Then he roused the child and got to his feet, stiff and cold and weary but at peace.

Firiel yawned. 'Is it time to go now?'

'Indeed it is.'

'Have I been good? Shall we come again next year?'

'I come every year. You can come if you like.'

'I do like.' She held up her arms to him. 'I'm very tired, will you carry me?'

He lifted her gently, and as he turned to go, she waved her hand towards the fall and murmured, 'Good bye, Uncle Boromir – until next time.'


End file.
